In a small, remote region of western Alaska, two School of Nursing alumni are providing medical services to inhabitants through the Bethel Family Clinic they have been running since October 1999.
Bill Danforth, who graduated from the Nursing-Family Nurse Practitioner program in 1998, first became interested in the possibility of working at the clinic when another Penn graduate, Louise Kressly, spoke to his class.
"She spoke of strange things like working in a freezing clinic without running water due to chronically frozen pipes and of getting snow outside and boiling it for wound care," Danforth wrote in an e-mail to The Daily Pennsylvanian from Alaska.
He maintained contact with Kressly and discovered that the clinic was in need of two clinicians. Danforth and his partner, Elsee Larsen, who received a post-masters certificate in adult acute care from Penn, then moved to Alaska to run the clinic.
Located in Bethel, a town of 6,000 people, the Bethel Family Clinic was founded in the 1980s as a response to the policies of the Native Hospital which refused to treat non-Native Americans.
A non-profit facility and the only private clinic in the region, Bethel had continually struggled financially. In its mission to provide the same type of quality and services that could be found at the Native Hospital, ranging from radiology to casting, the clinic had incurred a severe debt by the time Danforth and Larsen joined the board.
Danforth and Larsen heard about opportunities to receive funding through the Department of Health and Human Services and from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.
"In a period of three weeks, while keeping the clinic open, we worked late into the night, together with the chairperson of the clinic board of directors, and wrote a non-competitive, renewable grant," Danforth said.
News about the successful procurement of funds arrived on Sept. 28 of this year -- which was just in time, as Danforth and Larsen were preparing to close the clinic for lack of funds. The Bethel clinic was one of 12 health groups that received portions of the $6.5 million awarded to Alaska's Frontier Health Plan. Designed by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services in conjunction with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Ark.), the new health program plans to furnish Alaska's rural residents with the care that they need.
The $502,220 allocated to the clinic will be used to continue and expand the existing primary care services accessible by Native-American and non-Native-American patients in the Yukon-Kuskokwin Delta region where Bethel is located.
Through the challenge of acquiring a steady stream of funds and exploring new areas, Danforth has recognized some benefits of his Penn Nursing education.
"Penn prides itself on research and fund-raising abilities," Danforth said. "While those did not particularly interest me as a graduate student, they are very relevant now. The community health centers in remote Alaskan areas simply cannot subsist on patient receipts alone, and one is called upon to seek out alternative sources of funding."
With the grant money, Danforth and Larsen are focusing on repairing facilities, recruiting staff members, physicians and specialists and coordinating care to outlying villages. Kressly has also returned to the clinic as its administrator.
Through his work in the clinic and life in a different environment, Danforth has had a chance to gain an experience not many have had. Even with the tough physical living conditions -- the freezing temperatures worsened by extreme wind chills in the winter and the large amounts of mosquitoes and dust in the summer -- Danforth said he has adjusted.
"Bethel is a neat place to live because it is so culturally diversified," Danforth said. "There is a spirit of 'live and let live,' and there are some really good folks in the community."
Running the clinic allows Danforth and Larsen complete independence, full prescribing rights and even dispensing privileges. Unusual cases that have arisen during their work at the clinic, mainly concern epidemiologically prevalent cases including inhalation abuse, botulism and trauma.
